La verité 179
Posted on
April 04, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re going to let this speak for itself.
Leesten varry caurfelly 245
Posted on
April 04, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
…we shall say zees only wance.
That clip (from just past midnight on the BBC News channel) isn’t a bad starting-point summary of last night’s extraordinary story, except by our count the Telegraph’s piece was fourth-hand rather than third-hand.
(First-hand would have been Nicola Sturgeon. Second-hand would have been the ambassador. Third-hand would have been the consul-general. The civil servant – who doubted the story him/herself – is fourth-hand.)
This is also a pretty good primer. Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
Marbles down 189
Posted on
April 03, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Sheesh. We pop out for a couple of hours to feed the Wings Emergency Kitten and we get back to find that it’s the UK press that’s barfed up hairballs all over its front pages.
And the contradictory cross-vortex coverlines aren’t even the mad bit.
The repelling magnets 184
Posted on
April 03, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In over 20 years of living in Bath, spanning five general elections, we’ve never seen a political billboard in town before. There’s been no point. In vote-share terms the city is the 4th-safest Lib Dem seat in the UK (and the 2nd-safest in England), and it has been since the party won it from the Conservatives in 1992.
But we’ve got a billboard now, featuring two men whose parties haven’t got an earthly hope of winning here (one of them because it’s not standing). What’s that all about?
New friends 165
Posted on
April 03, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Nicola Sturgeon is brilliant. Can we just outsource all our politics to Scotland and make Parliament into a Weatherspoon’s? #leadersdebate
— Brian Millar (@arthurascii) April 2, 2015
Pay attention this time, Mr Murphy 413
Posted on
April 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Journalist of the day 156
Posted on
April 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Ladies and gentlemen, golf and lynching enthusiast Mr Fraser Paterson:
When oh when will the First Minister condemn these vile cybernat oh wait.
Saying what everyone’s thinking 299
Posted on
April 01, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is an extract from this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 (starts about 2h 5m in), in which James Naughtie expresses an unusually frank and forthright opinion on Jim Murphy’s claim about the biggest party forming the government.
.
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
A change of mind 133
Posted on
April 01, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Because we’ve been thinking about it carefully, and as the biggest party always forms the government of the UK – like it or not, that’s a simple fact – there’s only one way to protect Scotland’s interests for the next five years. Independence can wait.
Today of all days, you know it makes sense.
The weight of evidence 157
Posted on
March 31, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Like some sort of out-of-control, unstoppable lying machine, Scottish Labour keep telling the electorate that the party with the most seats in a hung parliament is the one that forms the government, and that the only way to prevent the Conservatives from returning to power is for Labour to be the biggest party.
They’ve been saying it for weeks. They say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, almost as if it’s all they’ve got.
The trouble is that an awful lot of people seem to disagree with them.
Ducking and diving 154
Posted on
March 31, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Credit is due to those of the Scottish media who have taken up this site’s challenge to ask Labour the key question of the 2015 election debate in Scotland – “Are Labour prepared to form a government if they’re not the largest party in a hung parliament?”
(Because if the answer is yes then Labour’s entire Scottish election strategy – “Vote SNP get Tories!” – crumbles to dust, and if it’s no then Labour is saying that it’d be prepared to abandon not just Scotland but the whole UK to another five years of Conservative government purely out of spite against the SNP.)
Three of the party’s elected representatives have now been asked the question on air – James Kelly MSP by John Mackay of Scotland Tonight a week ago, branch office leader Jim Murphy by BBC Scotland’s Gary Robertson yesterday, and the shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran last night (below), again by STV’s John Mackay.
As you can see, Scotland’s voters still await an answer. But on this page we’ll keep track of all the swerves, evasions and dodges until we get one, if we ever do.
History written by losers 114
Posted on
March 31, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Because we took a short break over the weekend, we sadly missed Labour’s solemn commemorations of the 1979 confidence vote, and as a result we don’t know whether anyone actually did don a black armband or lay a wreath to remember the miners that Labour didn’t support when they went on strike a few years later.
But an alert reader did find this for us.
It’s an extract from BBC reporter John Sergeant’s book “Maggie: Margaret Thatcher – Her Fatal Legacy” and you can read more of it below.
